Paulding to Become a Camera Ready Community

The Paulding County Chamber of Commerce will obtain a Camera-Ready certification on March 21. The status is intended to help to attract film producers to the county for future projects, who already are being drawn to the state through some very favorable tax credits and other incentives.

According to Carolyn Delamont, president/CEO of the Paulding Chamber of Commerce, Georgia may rank as high as number two in the nation on its tax incentives for that industry to do business here.

“Craig Dominey, film location specialist and Camera-Ready Program manager for the Entertainment Division of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, met with the Chamber last year and he talked about the films that have been done in Georgia,” Delamont said.

Dominey also said that the environment was becoming very competitive within the state since the establishment of the film commission during the administration of Gov. Jimmy Carter.

Paulding County follows Bibb, Carroll, Chatham, Coweta, DeKalb, Dougherty, Emanuel, Floyd, Fulton, Hall, Houston, Lowndes, Morgan, Newton, Walker and Wilkes counties, which were recognized by the Georgia Department of Economic Development as the first 16 Camera Ready communities at the kickoff event held in Atlanta last October.

Camera Ready is a designation put in place by the state to offer film and television production companies easier, faster and better access to local resources and information. Camera Ready communities assist film and television production companies through a liaison on a local level.

In 2008, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed into law the Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act, boosting the state tax credit for qualified production and post-production expenditures by as much as 30 percent. It’s available not only to traditional motion picture projects such as feature films, television series, commercials and music videos, but also innovative new industries such as game development and animation.

The Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act offers an across-the-board flat tax credit of 20 percent based on a minimum investment of $500,000 on qualified productions in Georgia. An additional 10 percent Georgia Entertainment Promotion (GEP) uplift can be earned by including an imbedded animated Georgia logo on approved projects.

Even prior to obtaining this status the county has recently played host to several Hollywood film productions. “Get Low,” released in 2009, was filmed at Pickett’s Mill and starred Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek in a story about the mysterious, 1930s Tennessee hermit who famously threw his own rollicking funeral party—while he was still alive.

In 2009, 348 productions were shot in Georgia with a total value of $770 million and economic impact over $1 billion.

, and the finished film may even include a shot of Mayor Carmen Rollins, who said afterwards that she would very much encourage more film projects to come to Hiram and the county.

Just last month the , usually on the exhibition side of the equation, . “Joyful Noise” which stars Dolly Parton, Queen Latifah, and Kris Kristofferson, .

While the Dallas Theater could not host a premiere due to licensing and other requirements, it could eventually screen the film, according to Dallas Theater Manager Lenay Walker.

“We’re excited to see the movie come out, and allegedly the scene that was filmed here will be the opening scene of the movie,” she said.

Walker said the film company rented out the theater for 10 days to the film crew at the regular rate of $1,000 a day for a private company. The theater’s 500 seats were mostly occupied by technicians, klieg lights and a camera on a huge crane positioned in an aisle, which swooped over the seated audience comprised of locals.

According to Walker, the county’s Camera-Ready information is in process.

“It entails filling out some paperwork online, and taking photographs of different landmarks in the county including churches, farmhouses, the theater here, Pickett’s Mill—anything that would be of interest to a film organization looking for on-location shooting,” she said. “So it’s a pretty big undertaking, we hope to have completed, I would say, by the end of the summer. There are so many things in Paulding County to include, it’s hard to narrow it down, and that’s what we’re working on now.”

Walker said that producers interested in filming here would contact the Georgia Film Commission with specific site requests and then view the location portfolio, either online or in book form, which would hopefully then serve to entice filmmakers to come and consider using county sites in their productions.